


Vier

by Yngvildr the Voracious (Yngvildr_the_Voracious)



Series: Und dann waren sie vier [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Other, beau apologises for lashing out, beau's lashing out physically, i think molly is disassociating plz tell me what i wrote so i can tag it, nott the wise, therapist caleb
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-30
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-05-31 06:59:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15114194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yngvildr_the_Voracious/pseuds/Yngvildr%20the%20Voracious
Summary: All that is left of the Nein is four.





	Vier

**Author's Note:**

> MERCER WENT FOR THE HEART AND IT JUST POURED OUT LIKE THE BLOOD OF CORELLON!!!!
> 
> plz help me tag this in the comments

Beauregard’s clenched fist breaks on the cart. Nott’s holding a silk flower she presents to Molly.

“Yasha likes flowers.” The young goblin woman says, her voice trembling.

They find crumbs of donuts and a piece of fabric that Molly identifies as a ripped piece of Fjord's under armour.

Caleb is the one who picks up the silvery emblem in the shape of open doors. He puts it in his pocket, near the jagged cross adorned with moon crescents. He tries not to cry, but it has been very long since he last had to hold back tears.

The tracks lead them to a small village that is nothing more but three houses huddled close together in the middle of rye fields. The biggest house has a shop and two rooms for travelers on the ground floor. Tonight’s dinner is rye bread and cabbage soup with bacon strips in it. It tastes like despair. Caleb tries not to cry again when he turns to where he thought Jester would have sat to tell her that when he was a child, at breakfast, he would have rye bread with butter and tomatoes and rye toast with butter and blackberry jam.

She would have loved it. Beauregard picks at the soup. Nott is not eating. Molly is stabbing at the bread like it’s whoever took their friends.

Their host insists that sleeping all together in the same room when there’s only two single beds in each would be impractical and despite their need to huddle close, they figure that giving into that behaviour would earn them sore backs and cricks in their necks. Nott looks at Beauregard for a moment and expresses the willingness to sort of bunk with her,  _ not that you’re my first choice _ . Beauregard almost balks but she is hurting too much, Caleb sees it plainly on her face. She had cried again as well. She makes it look like she doesn’t care but she is still angry and tired and scared for her friends, so she simply goes to the room on the left and glances behind when Nott doesn’t immediately follow. The girls close the door and lock it behind them.

He looks at Molly, still stabbing the rye bread to shreds, his red eyes looking dull and glassy.

Caleb decides that he has to help them. ( _ He refuses to think the words, to say “those that remains”, because Jester, Yasha and Fjord are somewhere, they’re just  _ delayed)

“Come here, Mollymauk.” Caleb says, putting his hand on the tiefling’s arm. “Let’s go to bed.”

“ _ Empty. _ ” Molly muttered, still absently stabbing the bread. “ _ It’s all empty. I’m empty. _ ”

Caleb’s heart felt like it was going to break into tiny little pieces. He takes a deep breath and answers.

“You’re not empty. You’re Mollymauk Tealeaf and you are magical.” Caleb says on the most even tone he can muster. It sounds forceful, though. He is scared of breaking his purple friend.

Mollymauk turns to Caleb, his eyes two deep pools of red.

“Do you really think I’m magical?” he asks.

Caleb smiles, fondly, reminding himself of how Mollymauk has been occupying his thoughts. Nothing shameful, but everything the tiefling did was showy and sparkly, just like the arcane.

“ _ Ja. _ ” he whispers, his head accompanying his words with a forceful nod.

“And you like magic things.”

“Yeah, I like magic things.”

“Does that mean you like me?”

Caleb’s smile dulls a bit but he upholds it because once, he has to keep Molly in a good mood in this sea of dark uncertainty and fear and second, none of what he is saying is untrue.

“Yes, I like you, Mollymauk. You’re a nice person.” he says.

Mollymauk seems satisfied and a little bit of colour returns to his features. The knife slips from his hand and onto the table. The ruined bread is left there as a warm hand takes Caleb’s, the one that is on Molly’s shoulder.

“Thank you Caleb. I like you too.”

Caleb smiles and Molly rises so he follows the movement. Their hands don’t separate, they only intertwine further, thumbs rubbing on knuckles and shoulders awkwardly bumping.

“Sometimes I worry I like you too much.” Molly says when the door is closed, when their hands had to separate to get to beds and their host didn’t. These are two narrow single beds, alright. Yasha wouldn’t have fit in one of those and even Fjord would have...

Caleb’s heart was sinking in his stomach and he sighed for the upteenth time since the beginning of the day. He didn’t want to cry anymore, so he summoned Frumpkin and let the familiar nuzzle his now regrown facial hair.

“You don’t have to worry about it.” Caleb says.

“But what if it had been you. What if they had taken y…” Molly stops suddenly and in the dark, Caleb feels his throat constrict. He silently recites all schools of magic in his head then all of the Sylvan alphabet and when this is over, he does it all over again but backwards.

“Do you want Frumpkin to hug you?” Caleb asks when he’s calmed down. It doesn’t feel right hoarding the cat for himself tonight.

At first, he thinks maybe Molly passed out from exhaustion. Then he hears the scraping and sees Molly, under the moonlight leaking from the windows, move the bunk bed he was lying on next to the one Caleb’s using. He lies down, leaving the seam of their improvised bed to separate them like the sword of a knight in tales of old.

When they wake up, they are tangled together as if they had felt asleep while cuddling, Frumpkin liquidly lazying between their legs.

They doesn’t speak of it. They don’t speak of Beau’s bruised knuckles or Nott’s black eye, but Caleb does worry.

Beau doesn’t say anything at first, but Molly is driving and Nott is scouting ahead with a horse, trying to follow the tracks while they’re still fresh. The monk whispers and sniffles.

“I hit Nott. I feel like shit. She told me she accepted my apology, she’s wrong, she shouldn’t. No matter what’s happening she shouldn’t have.”

Caleb hugs Beau, awkwardly, as usual.

“Next time we’ll all sleep together. Make good on that promise.” he tells her. “Each other’s failsafes. Remember?”

Beau nods.

“I’m a garbage person.” she grunts as she puts her face to rights with one of her blue sashes.

“I am also a garbage person.” Caleb says. “But at least, you apologised. And we’re all going to make it better.” he adds, trying to channel what helped him help Mollymauk last evening.

They have to camp the next nights and they are grateful for it because Caleb feels comfortable breaking in the silver thread again and guard their perimeter with the arcane. Nott volunteers for first watch and Caleb joins her.

“It’s alright, it’s solved.” Nott says. “You know, when someone was taken or died in the clan… The usually told us girls to replace them, you know. I always said no and no one found me attractive anyway so thankfully, I didn’t have to… I think, it’s a bit like that. Some people, when they worry or they’re sad, they get more violent because they need to let the pain out. Beau is like that too. Shouting orders around, saying stuff they don’t mean. Punching you in the face… She apologised. She’s getting better at it. She was very nice today. Well, her particular kind of nice, but I could tell, she only said  _ fuck _ ten times around me. We just have to find Yasha, Jester and Fjord and everything will be alright.”

Caleb nods and praises his wise and brave friend internally, giving her a warm smile. When he thinks the conversation is over, she keeps on with even a quieter voice.

“I didn’t like it when people died in the clan.” Nott adds. “As I said, they would tell us that if we don’t make babies to replace the dead, we were useless. Some of the women even shouted at me about it, but that’s pretty much it. I never… I mean. I just wanted to clarify: they never hurt me  _ that _ way. There is a line even goblins didn’t cross, even with the slaves and the prisoners. They didn’t do that.”

“It is a good thing.” Caleb nodded. And indeed a bunch of people eating creatures not stooping as low as humans often did put a lot of things in perspective when it came to their society.

Nott was calm. There was an edge of course, but she was calm and focused.

“We have to find them.” she said, her voice going back to normal levels. “We will.”

They woke Molly and Beau up for their turn and fell asleep in their usual lump of goblin-human-extraplanar cat flanked by a tiefling and a monk. They woke up in a bigger pile still from their companions falling asleep on them. Thankfully, nothing happened during the night but Caleb felt like they were back to square one. One face looking as guilty as the next, they were disappointed in themselves, even Nott who wasn’t even on guard duty. Her scouting was extra long that day.

“The trail is growing cold.” she says as she comes back. “The roads are becoming trails. We’d have to leave the cart. I’m not even sure the horses can travel it.”

Thankfully, Beau, having read more books about survival than any of them, and Caleb, having the most arcane knowledge, spotted the illusion hiding a bigger trail. A well travelled one.

“This mark.” Molly grunts, pointing at a lone elm tree whose bark was mercilessly carved with a symbol.

It looks like hands. Or maybe worms? Caleb was sure he saw it in the Gentleman’s hideout in the Labenda Swamp but he can’t quite remember if he saw it in his studies before.

“Let’s go.” Beau says, driving the cart on the road.

No one stops her.

The fight is ugly. There are people in cages, Caleb doesn’t want to hurt them with a badly aimed firebolt. Nott is a furious ball of energy, firing the new contraption they got for killing the clockwork warden with precision and reloading it with rage.

Mollymauk and Beauregard jump from enemies to enemies, one blinking in a Fey-like step, the other kicking and punching multiple enemies like they were in one of those fairytales where the heroes always win in the end.

The happiness is real when they get Jester back, her dress torn, tears streaming down her face, exhausted. They are quick to free her of her cage and her binds. She immediately goes to the other cages to free everyone else.

“Jester. Where are Fjord and Yasha?” Beau asks.

“They’ve…” Jester stutters as she tries to jam a key into its intended keyhole to free a bunch of small sized individuals who pretty much look like skeletal children. “They’ve already been moved. That man, he said he had good buyers.” she says, her usual mirth gone. It’s all gone, just like the fat on her hips, the fat in her cheeks, the bounce in her step.

The captives run, some of them thank the group, but it’s mostly everyman for himself. They find themselves mostly alone in the slavers camp. They give Jester her bag and a smile goes to her face when she sees it. Nott is the first to hug her.

Caleb sets the perimeter and sleep eludes him. He too starts to tire of the search for their friends and that half victory has not satisfied him.

“Tell me, Caleb. Are you alright?” he hears behind him.

Mollymauk. Caleb didn’t wake him up, he couldn’t sleep anyway, he could catch up on rest in the cart. He is not skilled at scouting like Nott is, he cannot heal like Jester does, even Molly, in his way, helps with healing and Beau takes the brunt of the blows for them.

“Ja. I’m fine.” Caleb says.

“I wanted to say thank you.” Molly tells him in a low gravelly voice, the one he has when emotions are about to overcome him, but the emotion is not pure unaltered joy.

“I mostly used my cat’s paw…”

“You kept us all together.” Molly interrupted his mumbling. “You went to each of us and you listened, you held us, even if touching is not your thing, you bore with my touchy-feely self, you hugged Beauregard and you slept in our cuddle pile and you… Caleb, you are our hero.”

Caleb turns his gaze to the fire, seeing it crackle and cast its shadows.

“I’m not a hero.” he says.

“A hero, I don’t know. But you’re ours. And you’re mine.” Molly says, his red eyes piercing through Caleb’s blues. “Thank you. Really, Mr Caleb Widogast.”

The tiefling scoots an inch closer, his hot thigh now touching Caleb’s and his face is getting very close. The human’s heart beats like a drum and his cheekbone tingles where Mollymauk leaves a kiss. A peck really.

“Now, tell me.” Mollymauk repeats. “Are you alright?”

Caleb fixes Molly’s speech in his memory. He wants to be able to remember this forever, even when he’s in doubt of his own ability to do good.

“Now? Now I feel better.” he answers.

He dares return the small squeeze, almost an embrace and it’s only when Caleb is snoring on his shoulder that Mollymauk wakes the next in rotation before tangling himself once again closer to the wizard.

 


End file.
